


TimBart in the Library

by BatBoyBlog



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics), Impulse (Comics), Robin (Comics), The Flash (Comics)
Genre: Cute, Library AU, M/M, Summer, soft, summer job
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-09-15 21:43:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16941279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BatBoyBlog/pseuds/BatBoyBlog
Summary: A bit of a cliche AU, at the library but I thought it was cute so what the heck





	TimBart in the Library

“Arrgh! Max come on, it’ll be sooo boring!” Bart Allen pleaded, dragging his hands down his face as he rolled his eyes up into his head.

His guardian, Max Crandall, barely looked away from his newspaper. “It’s good work experience.”

“Maaaax! I’m 14, I don’t need a job!”

“Maybe, but you do need something to keep you out of trouble over the summer.”

“When have I ever gotten into trouble?!”

Max just gave him a look over the top of the paper.

“Okay okay, but but, like, the library? Max, really? I don’t read, you know I don’t read, is there like a job where I can, I don’t know… play video games all day?”

Max looked at him for a long moment. “No, there isn’t, Bart, and when school gets out you will be a junior librarian, end of story.”

And it was. Two weeks later on the first Monday of summer vacation, Max frog marched Bart into the library. They met the librarian, a plump woman in her 40s named Cheryl who managed to work the fact she had five cats into the conversation. Bart was the only teenager who’d been signed up to be a junior librarian which just made the whole thing that much more embarrassing. Once Cheryl taught him the basics, he kept having to use his phone to remember the Dewey Decimal System, and she disappeared into her office on the third day, leaving Bart to run the whole library by himself. That was Wednesday, on Thursday he showed up.

Bart was behind the checkout counter, playing Super Hexagon on his phone and ignoring the growing piles of books he needed to check back in and shelve when a shadow fell on him. He looked up into a pair of blue, blue eyes. The boy had shaggy black hair, just a little too long to be respectable. He was just a bit taller than Bart, and maybe a year or so older. He was smiling an easy smile with perfect teeth which made Bart self-conscious about his red and yellow braces.  
He must have been staring for a long time, because the boy shifted his weight awkwardly and said, “you gonna check me out?”

Bart blushed hard not really knowing why, why would this boy think he was checking him out? Boys don’t do that to boys! But he also sounded like that was something he’d like Bart to do, why would he want that? “What? Um no!”

The boy’s eyebrow arched, before he pushed a thick book across the counter at Bart.

“Oh,” Bart blushed even more, “check out the book.”

The boy nodded slowly like he thought Bart was slow.

Bart quickly grabbed the book and flipped it over to scan the bar code. “Moby-Dick eh?” He fought down the urge to make a joke about ‘dick’. He didn’t know why he wanted to impress this kid, also what kinda kid read huge 200 year old books over the summer?

“Have you read it?” the boy asked and Bart tried not to laugh.

“No! I mean, like everyone knows what it’s about, right? Big whale, crazy peg leg dude?”

The boy gave him a look then smiled and said “Nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.” He’d clearly been quoting and Bart’s face burned and he felt very awkward and confused. The boy winked at him “Thanks for the book. See you around, short stuff”.

Bart ran home at the end of his time at the library and tore Max’s copy of Moby-Dick off the shelf, sure that it was really a 1700s erotica book. About a page and a half of reading later he gave up in disgust; it wasn’t erotica at all. Bart was sure that the boy with the messy hair had made that quote about squeezing together to make the sperm of kindness up to embarrass him. He wasn’t going to think any more about the boy, nope no sir, 100% out of mind.

Bart thought about him every day. He thought about his perfect teeth, he wondered how he got his hair to look so good and also like he didn’t care about it at all, he thought about the way he’d said the word ‘sperm’ which made Bart sweaty and uncomfortable. About four days later Bart started to come to a conclusion. His friends over the last year and a half had started talking about girls, some of them seemed to only talk about girls now. Bart didn’t really get it; he had definitely done the puberty thing, he wasn’t a late bloomer, but he had yet to see a girl he couldn’t stop talking about like his friends. He’d just figured he was picky and the right one would turn up, that high school would bring the right girl. Honestly, he hadn’t thought about it much, his few slow dances with girls at school dances had been awkward but he figured it was because he didn’t know them. Now, he was starting to wonder if it was for a different reason, and he had to talk to someone.

“Max?” Bart was laying upside-down on the couch, his feet straight up in the air while his head hung over the edge his long brown hair brushing the floor.

Max looked up from his book, “yeah buddy?”

“How do you know when you’ve got a crush on some one?”

“Well, generally, you can’t stop thinking about the person, can’t get them out of your head, all the little details.”

“Yeah that’s what I thought…. is it the same when your crush is a boy?”

“Well, I wouldn’t know firsthand, but I hear that it is. Do you know if this boy is like that?”

“Maybe?” Bart had no idea, maybe the boy had just said that thing about squeezing to embarrass him and wasn’t flirting.

A full week passed, and Bart waited, distracting himself by reading the cliff-notes for Moby-Dick; he still didn’t get it. The next Thursday the boy walked in, sliding the book into the book drop and giving Bart a smile and a little wave as he made his way into the library. It took a great effort for Bart not to run after him and follow him around like a puppy dog. Bart messed with his huge mess of brown hair making sure it didn’t cover his face, and practiced his smile, how to smile without showing off his braces. It seemed like forever till the boy returned, this time carrying three books. He dropped them down in front of Bart and handed over his library card. The name of the book on top staring up at him was “Boy Meets Boy”; Bart nearly fainted. He checked out the books on automatic trying to think of what to say to this boy, this boy he totally did have a crush on and who was, ‘like that’.

If he didn’t say something soon the boy would leave so he forced himself to say something “so um, last week? I didn’t get your name?”

The boy smiled at him before reaching out and tapping the library card in Bart’s hand. It had never crossed Bart’s mind that of course the boy’s name was on his card. He looked at the card and it read “Timothy Drake-Wayne”.

“Call me Tim,” the boy, Tim, said as he took the card and packed up his books.

Bart was disappointed this boy didn’t seem to want his name, “um are you gonna-”

“Ask your name? Your name is Bartholomew, but you like to be called Bart Allen. You’re 14 years old, you graduated 8th grade at Grace Middle School, and you’ll be starting your Freshman year at Central High after the summer. You live with your Uncle Max in the Gracewood neighborhood.”

Bart’s mouth hung open and his eyes bugged out, was this boy some kind of Sherlock Holmes?

Tim looked at his face and burst out laughing, “never read the paragraph they put next to your picture at the door?”

“Um no?”

“Well it’s all there,” Tim said as he started to turn away toward the door, “wait!” Bart shouted and Tim turned back.

“It’s.. not fair you know all that stuff about me, but I don’t know jack about you.”

Tim smiled at him, “Google me, short stuff, and you’ll know more about me than I know.”

With that he was gone. Bart wondered what Tim could have meant, maybe a way to find his Facebook or something. Pulling out his phone and carefully typed ‘Timothy Drake-Wayne’ into google. His phone screen filled with news stories and pictures. It took awhile to work through all the information and make it to Tim’s Wikipedia page. Bart tried to wrap his mind around the idea he knew someone with their own Wikipedia page. Wikipedia told him that Tim was the third son of billionaire Bruce Wayne, adopted after the death of his father Jack Drake. He was 16 years old and going to be a junior at Middle Wood Prep School. There was a picture of him in a dark red jack and dark green pants for a school uniform. Bart spent the rest of the day and the rest of the week freaking out. What would an amazingly rich, famous and world travelled 16 year old want with some dorky, 14 year old freshman? Juniors don’t date freshman, that was a law or something, and private school kids don’t date public school kids, also a law.

Like clockwork, Tim showed up at the library the next Thursday and returned his books. When Tim returned with a new book, The Song of Achilles, Bart could barely breathe. Tim looked at him intensely but didn’t say anything and Bart didn’t say anything till Tim started to pack away his things.

“Um Tim? Would you like to um…”

Tim smiled at him ,“I thought you’d never ask Bart,” he grabbed Bart’s hand and pulled out a Sharpie and wrote his number on Bart’s hand. Then Tim looked into Bart’s eyes and smiled, leaning in and planting a quick, light kiss on his lips. Bart felt that half a second of a kiss like he’d stuck his finger in an outlet, his teeth tingled and curled. Tim leaned back and winked “see you soon.”


End file.
